#which is the problem

[johnsspacesuittight]

here’s the thing I wouldn’t put it past Shayne and Courtney to do a fake wedding shoot for April Fools, I also wouldn’t put it past them to actually get married and hard launch on April Fools just to fuck with everyone as hard as possible

[mxtxfanatic]

Xie Lian doesn’t fucking change in his beliefs or morality from beginning to end of the entire book. He almost loses himself in book 4 but is brought back from the brink by Wuming (Hua Cheng), prompting him to vow to never lose himself again. All of the suffering he experienced after his first ascension? A direct result of his unchanging beliefs, as stated directly by Guoshi:

“He had always been setting riddles for you to test you,” Head Priest said, “The Human Face Disease of Xian Le was the first question. Based on his answer, as long as you chose to unleash the Human Face Disease against Yong An back then, then you would’ve passed. Not only would he not have banished you, he would even help you cover up, and truly turn you into his trusted heir, taking one step to reach the top of the heavens while taking two steps against it. But you’ve answered wrong.”

“The period when you were banished, he should’ve set another riddle for you, but you still didn’t give him a satisfactory answer, so the moment you ascended, you were immediately beaten back down.”

...

“The second time you were banished and drifted in the mortal realm, he had countless opportunities to slowly ‘educate’ you, slowly wait until you’ve changed your mind.” Head Priest said, “Based on my observation, he was already calmed down at first, but this calm was disrupted recently.”

“The reason being your third ascension.”

“If you were a puddle of rotten mud, then whatever. But you, even after you’ve become like that, completely ignoring everything he’s planned for you, you actually were still able to ascend for the third time, and still the same as before, completely unchanged... I don’t know what he thought when he saw you, but I felt he would definitely set out more riddles to test you.”

—Chapt. 220: Heaven Official's Blessing The White Emperor Sets Life and Death Riddles in Secret, fan translation

Guoshi also had this to say about why Jun Wu made the type of choices he did in setting up these “riddles”:

... “Besides, as long as you start doubting yourself, doubting your true heart, your actions and objectives, then it’d be easy for him to lead you in the direction he wanted.”

“If you thought: ‘I am the Crown Prince of Wu Yong’, the possibility of you repeating his fate would be greater. He was leading you proactively, hoping to make you walk the same paths he did, so it wasn’t that your paths were somehow destined to be similar.”

“He couldn’t tolerate how similar you both were, but walked different paths.”

Xie Lian and the Crowned Prince of Wu Yong lived similar lives and had similar aspirations, but the moment the Crown Prince of Wu Yong faced an insurmountable problem that brought his entire kingdom to ruin, seemingly by his own hand, he could not handle it. He did not want to acknowledge the failure as a failure of self but as a forgone conclusion of human nature, that others would rather do immoral things to save their own lives or reputations or status and, therefore, nothing good can or should be done to help anyone else, especially not at the risk of any of those three things. Xie Lian, however, comes and proves him wrong by choosing to sacrifice himself over and over again for the benefit of others, even as they turned on him. White No-Face even tries to twist Xie Lian’s nature against him by sacrificing him against his will when he set Xie Lian up in that cave with the human face disease. But the moment Xie Lian is given a choice again, that is still the choice he makes, himself.

Jun Wu cannot stand that someone who has faced the same adversity as him would still hold tight to his morals, because Jun Wu ultimately hates that he could not hold to his own morals under the same pressures. This is why he manipulates every facet of Xie Lian’s post-first ascension life to play into this ultimate tragedy, to force Xie Lian into making the same decision that he feels like he was forced to make however many years prior. But what Jun Wu failed to realize but Xie Lian did is that even if every action is not met with resounding success, that does not mean that the action in and of itself was worthless or a waste of time. A failure to achieve one’s goals does not have to be a personal failure or a failure of the ones you tried to help; sometimes shit just happens! There is still good in doing good even without acknowledgement. Even being beaten at Jun Wu’s hands, Xie Lian continues to refuse Jun Wu’s path:

[Jun Wu] laughed maniacally then dragged Xie Lian and slammed him towards the rocks, smashing as he yelled, “WILL YOU CHANGE? WILL YOU CHANGE? WILL YOU CHANGE??”

It was as if Xie Lian had gone mad too, and he gripped Jun Wu’s arms roaring, “I WON’T! I WON’T! I WON’T CHANGE!!!”

Even though the smashing was making him see stars, incomparably painful, but he held this breath in stubbornly, refusing to give the desired answer at all, and cried as he roared, “I JUST WON’T CHANGE! EVEN IF IT’S PAINFUL I WON’T CHANGE, EVEN IF I DIE I WON’T CHANGE, I WILL NEVER CHANGE!!!”

—Chapt. 239: Heaven Official's Blessing Crack the White Armour; Fantastic Magic Shattering the Cursed Shackles

Xie Lian believes that his every kind act, regardless of the outcome, was still worth it, and that is the difference that drove the two men’s wildly different life paths.

[prossima-nebulosa]

my honest to god toxic trait is coming back to bkdk fics every time i think 'damn i wanna read a fic about x ship' and while searching for something i think 'damn there's nothing good here, nobody does it like my fellow bkdk-ers. but i already read everything on there gosh'

and end up finding a total random bkdk fic anyway that was just spot on the thing i wanted for my bkdk niche taste

[oreoambitions]

Sudden surge of irl people requesting to read my work and insisting that I carve out time in my life to write and demanding that I stop saying "just" fiction like a novel has less merit than a term paper and honestly... Thanks random confluence of irl encouragement

[moshpitpuppyx]

my sibling saw my haircut and immediately was like . wow lol you look like shit LIKE DUDE ????? who fucking raised you

[whatohitsonfirewelp]

Y’all are making it real hard to keep on not watching bridgerton when I keep seeing kanthony all over my dash

[harrypotterhogwartshitpost]

The worst thing you can do if you have ADHD is sit with someone who has ADHD

I’ll be sitting in economics mindlessly spinning in my chair and playing with my necklace, then I’ll look up and see the guy in front of me spinning in his chair and playing with his bracelet. Then I’m like “oh shit, I’m doing the same thing." And now I’m self aware of what I’m doing, so instead of that keeping me focused it becomes a distraction, because I now realize that I’m doing it as I’m still watching him do the same thing. So now I’m distracted by myself and by him. And then he’ll turn completely around and watch me do the same thing he’s doing, and now neither of us are paying attention to anything else for the last 45 minutes of class.

That or he’ll just turn around and look at me first and set off the same cycle.

[happyandticklish]

Which anime do you now associate with being tickled?? Any scenes that come up in the show now that ESPECIALLY make you think tickling?

The show was Ouran Highschool Host Club, which, btw, is the best fucking show ever and if any of you reading this haven't watched it, you should stop reading this post now to go watch it because it's great and I love it.

We didn't get too far into it (and I was,,,,, distracted during a lot of the scenes), so not a lot, but there are like certain scenes or lines that I'll be re-watching and for no reason at all my brain's like, "do you want to remember the exact moment you watched this scene and what spot was being tickled and how and what she was saying?" and I'm over here like "no??? I don't need this??? Let me watch my show in peace???"

And Ouran is one of my comfort animes, which means I watch it all the time, so, y'know. That's super fun.

We love it here🙃

[july-19th-club]

seriously have been thinking about this all night long. call me autistic but the fact that 90% of workplaces the point is not to get your work done and then be done doing it but to instead perform an elaborate social dance in which you find something to do even when you're done doing everything you need to do in order to show your fellow workers that you, too, are Working . because you are at Work . disgusting why cant we all agree that if there is no work immediately to be done. we just dont do anything

[stuckinapril]

lived my whole life in guilt bc i thought i was responsible for people's feelings. newly realizing that other people are responsible for their feelings and reactions, even if they make it seem like i'm the problem. a lot of the time it really has to do w them and their own emotional regulation. i can't keep thinking i'm not allowed to have space bc of other people's insecurities. like i literally refuse to dim myself. other people are responsible for their feelings just as i'm responsible for mine.

[evankinard]

I know I KNOW in my BONES that tommy is eventually going to leave after helping buck realize that eddie's the one he's in love with but god I hope we get at least a couple more episodes of buck and tommy together with tommy showing buck everything he's been missing. including more kisses. maybe even a make-out session. at the very least some implied fade out sex. show me buck getting to bask in this glow for a while longer before it gets complicated and hard to breathe again.

[visenyaism]

if pointing out that the age of getting a phone decreasing along with the prevalence of short form video as the dominant form of social media content during the most significant collective educational gap in recent history all of which happened during one of the most significant windows of psychological development in a human lifetime has had a deleterious effect on the attention spans, self-regulation, impulse control, social skills, tech literacy, and actual literacy of zoomers and gen alpha. if pointing out that that is a real and serious problem makes me a boomer and an old crank who has fallen for “kids these days” propaganda someone find me a porch and a rocking chair so i can yell at you to get off my lawn

[egophiliac]

(almost) four years in, and I finally had time to draw something for the anniversary! woo! 🎉🎉🎉

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[camembri]

you wanted zoro to be on whole cake island to fulfil your weird desire to see zoro punish sanji. I wanted zoro on whole cake island because I think he's stupid enough to right place wrong time the plan and accidentally marry Sanji in full view of the whole wedding party in what becomes the most elaborately constructed comedy of errors ever written. we are NOT the same.

[pdanno]

i just keep thinking about watching more game of thrones and getting righteously pissed off about the way they’ve been treating the women side characters. season 7 making me angry. but it’s also like. it’s GoT what did I expect.

ALSO THE TIMELINES ARENT MAKING SENSE ANYMORE. Like wtf why are they speeding things up like this. 2 episodes a characters leaves, then during th episode he’s halfway across the world and then by the end he’s back where he started? One episode a character is 2000 miles away from another, and the next episode they’re right next to each other? where’s the journey? why the rush? did jon snow drive across Westeros in a 2017 honda civic?

Like there’s. I know how it ends mostly. i know it ends bad. I know the writers fucked up. but i thought it didn’t start getting annoying until season 8 😭 I also hate the way they’re using “surprise! it’s an army to save the day” over and over. this is not. No. there can only be so many lucky incidental lining up of the timing of things. I need. more substance. reasoning. forethought. Please

anyway… i’m a olenna tyrell apologist until the end. She went out as badass as possible. cheers olenna u were possibly my fave, you little old rich lady, whom i abhor ur morals but adore ur personality.

i am gonna finish it :( i just like complaining